Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
07-01-2018
Close encounters of the racist kind
Close encounters of the racist kind
Alexander Zaitchik
The modern far right is crisscrossed with pseudo-scientific research into lost Aryan super-civilizations, biblical giants, ancient astronauts and the occasional inter-dimensional alien.
On December 6, 1830, Andrew Jackson used his second State of the Union address to defend the Indian Removal Act, the administration’s sole legislative victory. He described the law promulgating the expulsion and resettlement of southeastern Native American tribes as the “happy consummation” of U.S. Indian policy. To his critics who “wept over the fate of the aborigines” — and who, it turned out, accurately predicted the horrors of the forced migrations known collectively to history as the Trail of Tears — Jackson offered an archeology lesson. Any “melancholy reflections” were ahistorical, he said, because the Indians were neither innocent victims nor first peoples, but perpetrators of what Jackson’s modern admirers might call “white genocide.”
Jackson knew this because the evidence was everywhere in plain sight.
“In the monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, we behold the memorials of a once-powerful race,” said Jackson, “exterminated to make room for the existing savage tribes.”
This reference to a “once-powerful race” was not lost on the American public of 1830. Every schoolboy and girl knew it to be the Lost Race of the Mound Builders, believed to be the continent’s original Caucasian inhabitants. From the colonial era into the twentieth century, it was widely accepted that certain earthen structures and burial grounds proved the existence of “white” or Indo-European peoples who settled North America only to be wiped out by the arrival of Jackson’s “savage (Asiatic) tribes.”
As the country expanded west, the “Moundbuilders” myth had obvious utility: If the Indians destroyed earlier waves of (white) settlers, their own extermination was just another turn of history’s wheel.
In the early 1890s, the U.S. ethnologist Cyrus Vance discredited the theory in a series published by the Smithsonian Institution. But the idea of a pre-Colombian “white genocide” never disappeared. It survived in subcultures, influenced by the occult and Atlantis legends, which clung to theories of lost ancient super-civilizations that, curiously, always seemed to be racially “white.”
In recent decades, as evidence of a richer paleoamerican record than previously realized has come to light, Jackson’s “once-powerful race” has found a new generation of boosters on the far right, where fantasies of “white genocide” distantly past and currently unfolding are an animating obsession.
In the fractured and constantly cross-fertilizing galaxy of extremist conspiracy culture, the white Moundbuilders — now known on the far right as “the Solutreans” — share a stage with other characters from an ancient and racially glorious but “suppressed” past: ancient Nordic-looking astronauts, biblical Aryan giants, Nazi scientists under the South Pole, and the occasional inter-dimensional alien in league with the Jews.
Alt-History Goes Prime Time
Over the last decade, the History Channel has exploited and fueled the popularization of alternative archeology, or alt-history. Numerous programs on the network showcase ideas that, while not explicitly racist or anti-Semitic, have origins in colonial projects and have been championed (for a reason) by modern extremists.
Take “America Unearthed,” which aired between 2012 and 2015 on H2, a defunct History Channel network. That show’s host, a geologist named Scott Wolter, promoted theories that ancient Celts and Scots settled North America and hybridized Native Americans centuries before Columbus. The details can be found in Wolter’s contributions to Lost Worlds of Ancient America, a 2012 anthology edited by Frank Joseph, born Frank Collin, founder of the National Socialist Party of America. (In 1993, following his expulsion from the party for “impure blood”, Collin became editor of Ancient American magazine and has authored dozens of books dealing with ancient “suppressed” history.) In another episode, when a guest professes admiration for the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group of wealthy Southerners who sought to create a hemispheric slave empire, Wolter just nods. (Wolter has denied that he or his ideas are racist, and claims to be politically liberal.)
Whatever the personal politics of the host, these shows serve as vectors for racist ideas and scholarship, argues the independent scholar Jason Colavito, who has been tracking this cultural crossover and amplification of fringe history for years. In books like Foundations of Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts, and Other Alternative Pasts, Colavito explores and debunks many of the ideas promoted on the History Channel and far right websites alike.
“These shows serve as entry points for discredited nineteenth-century ideas and point viewers toward the sources of extremist pseudo-scholarship and politics,” says Colavito. “The idea that aliens built the pyramids isn’t so funny when it draws young people to websites that quickly switch out aliens for Jews and start talking about gas chambers.”
Shows like “America Unearthed” are heavily discussed on white nationalist alt-history forums, as well as general far right political sites like Stormfront. They are routinely praised for introducing viewers to variations on the Solutrean Hypothesis (see below) and raising the profile of racist pseudo-scholarship.
Consider the H2 series “In Search of Aliens,” which, before its demise, promoted the work of Jan Udo Holey, a German writer whose antisemitic books have been banned across Europe. (Holey’s pen name, Jan Van Helsig, is a blunt Dracula reference, i.e. Jews are bloodsuckers.) The History Channel’s long-running series “Ancient Aliens,” meanwhile, features David Childress, whose books cite and build on the work of James Churchward, who promoted an ancient empire called the “lost continent of Mu,” whose “dominant race” was an “exceedingly handsome people, with clear white or olive skin.”
While the appeal of these theories has roots in Jacksonian justification for Manifest Destiny, their current manifestations are closely intertwined with the venomous persecution complexes that motivate the modern far right .
“Pseudo-histories feed the self-importance and aggrievement of neo-Nazis and alt-right folk,” says Benjamin Radford, a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry who has written widely on pseudo-history and claims of paranormal activity. “They feel their rightful place in the world has been denied them — by ‘Big Archeology', by Jews, by an oppressive government.”
There is another source of the far right’s far-out ideas about ancient history, one that requires no psychologizing.
The Nazi Connection
The basic tenets of alt-archeology and alt-history were foundational to the ideology and program of National Socialism, but the Nazis did not invent them. The Nazi belief in a pure Aryan race with a glorious ancient past and distinct genetic history was central to a transatlantic nineteenth-century occult scene (that featured a heavy German influence.) After Hitler assumed power, this belief was institutionalized in the form of the Ancestral Heritage and Teaching Society, or the Ahnenerbe, an alt-archeology research outfit founded by Heinrich Himmler and the Atlantis theorist Herman Wirth.
Under the banner of the Ahnerbe, Nazi explorers fanned out across Europe and the globe in search of relics holding (possibly supernatural) hints of ancient Aryan glory. In 1938, a team was dispatched to Iceland in search of the lost Aryan civilization of Thule, which Nazi leaders discovered in an Icelandic epic poem. Among the Nazis’ interests in Thule was the legend of a race of ancient Aryan giants. (Versions of this myth remain common among biblically focused alt-historians like Steve Quayle and L.A. Marzulli.)
Belief in these legends was possible because of the Nazis’ sharp rejection of the Enlightenment. Dismissing the science of racial diversification and the archeological record, they reveled in symbology, myths and legends of “pure” ancient kingdoms that conquered the world under its symbol, the swastika. (This, the Nazis believed, explained the symbol’s presence in both Native American and Indian art.)
The Solutreans and the Original “White Genocide”
In the U.S., the average member of the far right is likely more familiar with the modern version of Jackson’s Race of the Moundbuilders, known as the Solutreans.
The name is taken from a hypothesis first promoted in the 1930s by the American archeologist Frank Hibben, who discovered arrowheads in North America that pre-dated the earliest Native American culture known at the time, the Clovis. The arrowheads, argued Hibben, resembled those of the Solutreans, a Stone Age people who inhabited southwestern Europe. Most of the field quickly dismissed the similarity as meaningless, but Hibben found adherents among those yearning for a new and more scientifically respectable version of Jackson’s “once-powerful race.” For them, the arrowheads (and other contested findings) prove that “European” Solutreans migrated to America across the northern ice-shelf millennia before “the Mongoloids” (as Solutrean adherents are apt to describe Native Americans.)
There is a second punchline to white nationalists continuing to hold up the Solutreans as victims of a prehistoric white persecution drama: Most scholars believe the Solutreans preceded racial diversification, and their arrowheads are artifacts of a dark-skinned people not long out of North Africa.
Atlantis, Aliens & Ancient Astronauts
In 1882, a decade before the Smithsonian debunked the Race of the Moundbuilders, a Minnesota Congressman and writer named Ignatius Loyola Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. The book provided another and more elaborate theory of an Aryan-looking super civilization that diffused technology to the rest of the world. Donnell’s book, based on mentions of Atlantis by Plato, cut the template for the sci-fi-tinged lost white civilization theories now experiencing a revival on cable television and beyond.
But just as Atlantis theory gained traction following the debunking of the Moundbuilders, so have theories of ancient Aryan astronauts superseded Atlantis with the mapping of the oceans and their floors.
“When there was nowhere left to explore, a group of thinkers started to project these ideas into the sky,” says Colavito, the historian. “Today, ancient astronauts are one of the more elaborate theories in pseudo-history with a racist component.”
In the 1960s and 70s, Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin put a twist on myths about Aryan visitors from a lost civilization predating the last Ice Age. These visitors to Mesoamerica didn’t come from Atlantis but from the sky. Bestsellers like von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods (seven million sold and counting) popularized the idea that Aryan-looking aliens brought science and technology to primitive peoples around the world. In recent years, Graham Hancock has repackaged Ancient Astronaut Theory for a new generation in his bestselling Fingerprints of the Gods, and through steady work as a History Channel talking head.
Today’s far right is divided on Ancient Astronaut theory. On the one hand, it denies agency to brown-skinned peoples, and features Aryan-looking heroes, which they consider good things; but it also deprives ancient (human) Aryans of the accomplishments credited to them so lavishly in Atlantis and other theories.
Consider the case of Patrick Chouinard, a prolific writer who operates the alt-history sites RenegadeTribune.com and ancientaryans.com. (The latter site’s symbol, the Norse rune, was also the logo of the Nazi Ahnenerbe.) Like the Nazis, the sites are dedicated to recapturing a lost, pure Aryan civilization — one respectful of, but not dependent on alien life. In September, Chouinard cast a critical eye on the upcoming tenth season of the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, in an article titled “Are Ancient Aliens Theorists Selling Our People Short?”
Chouinard believes they are. He cites an old episode of the H2’s In Search of Aliens in which the hosts, Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress (see above), explore the alleged mystery of some “elongated skulls” discovered in Peru. Chouinard scoffs at the hosts’ conclusion that the skulls belonged to aliens. Rather, he argued, reconstructions “show a very Nordic facial structure with [a] huge cranium.” This could be proof, furthermore, of “a separate branch of the White race the went along its own evolutionary path over 5,000 years ago.”
And who, you might wonder, does Chouinard believe is behind the Ancient Alien Theory that is “selling his people short”?
“The Jews,” writes Chouinard, “are using … the ancient alien camp to confound our race to the point that we deny our own accomplishments. The White race did not need ancient aliens to build our ancient civilizations, or to found other civilizations in remote corners of the Earth. Our race is capable of so much more.”
In 2018, it is dangerous in alt-ancient history circles to completely discount Ancient Aliens. Chouinard knows this. Rather than risk alienating his readers, he concedes, “It is very possible that visitations from extraterrestrials did happen in ancient times, [but] I will not conclude that the majority of our accomplishments as a race can be attributed to extraterrestrials.”
UFOs & “Refracted” Anti-Semitism
Massive and hopelessly intricate cover-ups. Nefarious alien races with gnomish physical features. Tales of secret Nazi super-technologies. It was always inevitable that the UFO and far right scenes would end up in bed together. UFO culture cast a shadow over everything in the postwar years, and as noted above, the far right has never been a stranger to the supernatural.
In Culture of Conspiracy, the historian Michael Barkun locates the early 1990s as the decade this convergence accelerated. Books like William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horseand journals published by Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn described UFO conspiracies that fit snugly into the New World Order conspiracy template, heavily influencing that decade’s militia movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was reportedly a fan of Cooper’s radio show.)
But the seeds of this union are much deeper in the postwar record. One of the most important early UFO writers in the early 1950s, William Dudley Pelly, was an American occultist and fascist; his most important disciple, George Hunt Williamson, produced Byzantine UFO theories that incorporated anti-Semitic themes. Williamson’s 1958 book, UFOsConfidential, claimed every government on earth was under the control of a handful of (mostly Jewish) “international bankers,” which for some reason the author believed included U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Pelley and Williamson’s successors are not always or even often so blatantly anti-Semitic. But the fingerprints of anti-Semites are visible in the works of influential modern UFO writers like Jim Marrs and Jim Keith. These fingerprints appear in what Barkun calls “refracted racism and anti-Semitism,” in which old tropes are repackaged as an episode of the X-Files. This repackaging often includes not very subtle distinctions between “benevolent” aliens (tall, Aryan-looking) and “malevolent” aliens (short, grotesque, often in league with “international bankers”).
More than anyone else, the British conspiracist David Icke has popularized the Alien version of New World Order conspiracy. The former sportscaster’s elaborate theory is the Sgt. Peppers album-cover of the genre, featuring the Masons, the Vatican, the Illuminati, the House of Windsor — everyone is there. At the center of the theory is an alien race of lizard people from the fifth-dimension. Though Icke has always denied trafficking in anti-Semitism, he has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — the famous forgery and foundational text of modern anti-Semitism — choosing to call it “The Illuminati Protocols.”
This is Barkun’s “refraction,” in action, and Icke’s shadow is long indeed, visible across the far right media spectrum.
Hollow Earth, Secret Nazi Labs & the South Pole
Another inevitable development in postwar conspiracy subculture was the rise of a belief in secret Nazi bases underneath Antarctica. The idea of a “hollow” or “inner” earth was a key tenet of nineteenth-century occultism, and in the postwar years it reemerged as a setting for escaped Nazi scientists working in secret technology and weapons labs.
The legend took root during the mid-1970s, nurtured by the Canadian neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, who argued that Nazis invented flying saucers and had taken their breakthrough technology to bases deep under the South Pole.
The Third Reich was interested in a possible base at the South Pole, and a few high-level Nazis did escape to Argentina, whose national territory includes a slice of Antarctica extending to the South Pole. Zundel and his successors have infused these facts with Victorian inner-earth legends, and then marinated them over multiple viewings of the 1968 B-flick, They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Versions of the theory remain popular on neo-Nazi alt-history sites, and in recent years British tabloids like the Mirror and Daily Star have found click-bait gold in spreading them.
The story’s persistence led Colin Summerhayes of Cambridge University’s Polar Research Institute to look into the matter. In a 2006 edition of The Polar Record, Summerhayes presented his heavily footnoted and researched conclusion that secret Nazi bases do not exist, and have never existed, on or below Antarctica.
As exhaustive as it was, it is unlikely Summerhayes’ study had much impact among the theory’s adherents. It was, after all, competing with an ever expanding glut of “hidden history” books, podcasts and websites. One of many such titles to appear that year was SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazi's Incredible Secret Technology, penned by Joseph P. Farrell, a prolific alt-historian and regular on Red Ice Radio.
DUST IN THE WIND Dust surrounding KIC 8462852 (known as Tabby’s star), shown in this artist’s illustration, could explain the star’s odd dips in light. But scientists don’t know where the dust came from.
JPL-CALTECH/NASA
The first observations of Tabby’s star flickering in real time have put the last nails in the “it’s-an-alien-megastructure” coffin.
The star’s most recent winks show that the dimming is from small dust particles surrounding it, a team of more than 200 scientists and amateur astronomers reports in a paper posted at arXiv.org January 3.
The oddball star, officially named KIC 8462852, is best known for its sudden drops in brightness (SN Online: 2/2/16). Astronomers have invoked everything from evaporating comets to an enormous edifice built by intelligent aliens to explain the sporadic winks.
In March 2016, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (for whom the star was nicknamed) and her colleagues began trying to catch light dips in the act using two automatic ground-based telescopes with the Las Cumbres Observatory, a worldwide network of telescopes.
On May 18, 2017, as Tabby’s star started to dim, at least 12 other telescopes rushed to follow up. That event turned out to be the first of four distinct light dips between May and the end of December, when the star moved behind the sun from Earth’s perspective.
Boyajian and colleagues report that the star grew dimmer in blue wavelengths than in red ones. That dimming is best explained by dust particles less than a micrometer in size, Boyajian says. If a large, opaque object — say, an alien megastructure — was blocking the star, then multiple telescopes should see the same level of dimming across many wavelengths of light. An earlier paper reported the same wavelength difference in the star’s dimming spanning several years (SN: 9/30/17, p. 11), but this is the first time it has been seen for the short-term dips.
“This is a very exciting step towards understanding this object,” says Brian Metzger of Columbia University, who was not involved in the new study. “It’s a nail in the coffin of anything where you imagine it’s some sort of solid structure.”
But declaring dust the culprit raises a new mystery. The dust is small enough that the star’s radiation should blow it away, so something must be constantly creating more of it.
“None of the ideas we have at this point are really great at putting all the pieces together,” Boyajian says. “Yeah, it’s dust, but where is it coming from? That’s still up in the air.”
And now … a big bubble theory. Scientists are discussing the possibility that our solar system formed in wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead star.
This simulation shows how bubbles form over the course of 4.7 million years from the intense stellar winds off a massive star. UChicago scientists postulated how our own solar system could have formed in the dense shell of such a bubble.
Image via V. Dwarkadas/ D. Rosenberg/ UChicagoNews.
For decades, astronomers have accepted the theory that our sun and planets – our solar system – formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a spinning cloud of gas and dust. In recent years, they’ve added to that idea a triggering mechanism: a nearby supernova, or exploding star. A nearby supernova might have triggered a gravitational collapse in the cloud of gas and dust, ultimately leading to our sun and its planets. But questions have remained, and now University of Chicago scientists have described a new comprehensive theory, which can explain some of the mysteries. According to their theory, our solar system might have formed in the wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead Wolf-Rayet star.
Wolf-Rayet stars are a type of star – more than 40 to 50 times the size of our own sun – that aren’t supernovae yet, but will likely become supernovae in the future. The new scenario by the UChicago scientists starts with this type of star, which, their statement said:
… burns the hottest of all stars, producing tons of elements which are flung off the surface in an intense stellar wind. As the Wolf-Rayet star sheds its mass, the stellar wind plows through the material that was around it, forming a bubble structure with a dense shell.
Geophysicist Nicolas Dauphas at UChicago is a co-author on the new study. He said:
The shell of such a bubble is a good place to produce stars.
That’s because dust and gas become trapped inside where they can condense into stars, and presumably solar systems like the one in which we live.
These scientists estimate that 1 percent to 16 percent of all sunlike stars could be formed in the bubbles produced by Wolf-Rayet stars.
This setup differs from the supernova hypothesis in order to make sense of two isotopes that occur in strange proportions in the early solar system, compared to the rest of the galaxy. Meteorites left over from the early solar system tell us there was a lot of aluminium-26. In addition, studies, including a 2015 one by Dauphas and a former student, increasingly suggest we had less of the isotope iron-60.
This brings scientists up short, because supernovae produce both isotopes.
Coauthor and astronomer Vikram Dwarkadas explained:
[The production of both elements by supernovae] begs the question of why one was injected into the solar system and the other was not.
That’s why these scientists turned to the idea of Wolf-Rayet stars. They are well-studied stars, known to release lots of aluminium-26, but no iron-60. Dwarkadas said
The idea is that aluminum-26 flung from the Wolf-Rayet star is carried outwards on grains of dust formed around the star. These grains have enough momentum to punch through one side of the shell, where they are mostly destroyed—trapping the aluminum inside the shell.
Eventually, part of the shell collapses inward due to gravity, forming our solar system, these scientists suggest.
As with all new theories, this one will have to undergo scrutiny by other scientists.
Slices of a simulation showing how bubbles around a massive star evolve over the course of millions of years (moving clockwise from top left).
Image via V. Dwarkadas/ D. Rosenberg/ UChicagoNews.
Bottom line: A new theory suggests the possibility that our solar system formed in wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead Wolf-Rayet star.µ
More than five years after it landed on the red planet, NASA’s Curiosity Rover is still cruising around and discovering curious things that have scientists here on Earth scratching their heads. While perusing the latest batch of photos taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), something unusual caught the eye of researcher Barry DiGregorio, author of Mars: The Living Planet and The Microbes of Mars.
It could be a ground-breaking discovery, he told the website Inside Outer Space. “They look remarkably similar to Ordovician trace fossils I have studied and photographed here on Earth,” he said. “If not trace fossils, what other geological explanations will NASA come up with?”
The rover has given us some stunning images of the red planet’s landscape, but tiny formations in a Martian rock may be the biggest find yet.
The stick-like features were first spotted in black-and-white photos takes by the rover. They’re quite unusual, so Curiosity is heading back there to take a closer look. “This site was so interesting that we backtracked to get to where the rover was parked for this plan,” wrote Curiosity team member Christopher Edwards in the January 3 Curiosity mission update.
NASA/JPL
The most likely explanation for the strange images is a natural formation, said Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute. “The Curiosity images really pique our curiosity,” he said. “It’s hard to tell what the wiggly sticks are, and a strictly mineral origin is, of course, the most plausible.”
The tiny tubes could be evidence of bioturbation, which is what occurs when organisms living in sediments leave an imprint on their structure. “A common example of bioturbation is the formation of worm burrows,” Lee explained. “The burrows, once refilled with sediments, fossilized, and then exposed by erosion, can end up looking like wiggly sticks.”
“To claim that we’re seeing bioturbation on Mars — which I did not say — would be an extraordinary claim,” he added.
The structures are very small, about a millimeter in width and five millimeters long. Their angular nature may indicate that they were formed by tiny crystals. Crystal molds, which are often found here on Earth, can form when crystals in rock dissolve. Even a roving laboratory like Curiosity would be hard pressed to make a definitive analysis, noted Ashwin Vasavada, project scientist for Curiousity.
“That’s pretty challenging on Earth to distinguish those two things without being able to put these things into a lab to look for the presence of organics,” he said. “We have a very limited capability overall to understand whether something is biological or not.”
Still, Curiosity does have some tools at its disposal, with Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer analysis planned for the site. The color camera on MAHLI will also be used to collect more detailed images for scientists to study.
“But I have to say, the imagery is really intriguing, and I hope Curiosity spends more time in the area to get to the bottom of this,” Lee said. “This is exciting!”
Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
The Week's Top Space Stories
NASA satellites capture amazing images of the "bomb cyclone" that hit the U.S. East Coast this week, SpaceX delays the launch of the secret Zuma mission, the loss of a $45 million Russian satellite is attributed to a launch site mix-up and a jetstream on Jupiter could give hints at what atmospheres are like on alien planets. Here are this week's top stories at Space.com.
Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC
1. Winter Storm Grayson created brutally cold temperatures
Many people are reeling from a powerful winter storm system that swept the U.S. East Coast on Thursday (Jan. 4). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used Earth-observing satellites to watch the "bomb cyclone," which has produced hurricane-levels winds and heavy snow over several states.
2. Winter storm likely behind delay of mysterious SpaceX mission
A Falcon 9 rocket will launch the secret Zuma mission no earlier than Sunday (Jan. 7), after "extreme weather" apparently delayed the liftoff originally scheduled for Friday (Jan. 5). The new launch window from SpaceX's pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida opens Sunday at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT).
3. Curiosity spots weird features in Martian rocks
The possibility that weird structures in Martian rocks could be fossils was an idea that one researcher entertained while poring over the first set of 2018 images from the Curiosity rover. But the Curiosity team isn't jumping to this conclusion, saying that crystals may have created the features.
Photo Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin
4. New tech could help astronomers spot rocky alien planets
In the 2020s, technology may be able to produce imagery of a rocky exoplanet in the nearby Alpha Centauri star system. The new technique announced on Dec. 15 could also make multi-star systems visible to researchers, too. According to previous work, two-thirds of sun-like stars coexist with at least one other star.µ
A Russian satellite was programmed for an incorrect launch site, and it was this human error in setting coordinates that caused Meteor-M No.2-1 to be lost in November 2017. A high-ranking Russian official announced the $45 million weather satellite was programmed as if it were to launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but actually launched at a site in eastern Russian.
New images reveal surface bubbles on a red giant star in the Crane constellation, showing the star's heat-transfer process for the first time. The star is known as Pi1 Grius, and it is about 350 times the diameter of the sun. The star's large size is attributed to swelling, caused when a sun-like star runs out of hydrogen to burn.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station successfully sequenced microbial DNA, and did so under extreme circumstances. While NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson was collecting the sample and getting ready to perform the never-before-seen procedure with guidance from a microbiologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, reports came in about Hurricane Harvey's approach.
8. Jupiter jetstream physics could apply to alien planets
Jet streams passing over Jupiter's equator have been known to change direction, somewhat like those on Earth and those seen on Saturn. A new study reveals gravity waves could be the reason the jet streams on Jupiter switch their flow, and scientists predict the new data could help pinpoint how atmospheres move across the skies of distant worlds.
Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
9. Heavyweight stars may play big role in cosmic evolution
New findings suggest that the universe might be home to more heavyweight stars than previously thought. Stars up to hundreds of times the mass of the sun are the source of many dramatic cosmic events, like black holes and massive explosions, and if these heavyweight stars are more common, perhaps they also play a bigger role in the universe's evolution than scientists had thought.
10. Asteroid with geological layers created Australian meteorite
Bunburra Rockhole is a meteorite that originated from a parent asteroid so large that it had a core, mantle and crust, according to a new analysis. While the asteroid was not as big as a planet, it should be large enough to at some point have been catalogued, meaning that this big asteroid is unknown or has eroded into a smaller space rock.
China Plans to Grow Plants and Insects on the Dark Side of the Moon
China Plans to Grow Plants and Insects on the Dark Side of the Moon
Chris Mahon
Image credit: YouTube
Did you know that profits from Pink Floyd's famous album, Dark Side of the Moon, helped fund Monty Python and the Holy Grail? How about the fact that Paul McCartney was originally supposed to sing on the album? Congrats! You now know more about that album than most people know about the actual dark side of the moon.
Chinese is planning to land a probe on the far side of the moon to see if plants and insects can be grown on the lunar surface.
Creative Commons
Sure, NASA has photographed the far side of the moon in the past, but no one has ever landed on it, much less explored it. That's supposed to change this year if China's ambitious new Chang'e 4 mission is successful.
The mission comes in two parts: the first part will launch in June and put a relay satellite into orbit 60,000 km behind the moon (meant to overcome the long-running difficulty of communication on the far side of the moon), while the second mission will launch a rover and lander to explore the surface. Included in this second launch will be a canister containing vegetables and insects—according to Zhang Yuanxun, who designed it:
"The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis. Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the moon."
Chang'e 3 Chinese lunar mission.
Chang'e 4 will be the first time anyone has ever landed on the far side of the moon. The planned location of the landing will be close to the Von Karman crater, the oldest (and largest) impact feature on the moon. The area around Von Karman also has abnormally high levels of thorium, which could serve as a potential nuclear fuel source in the future.
In 2013, China’s Chang’e 3, deploying the Jade Rabbit rover, makes the first soft landing on the moon since 1976. Chang’e 4 is set for lift-off in 2018.
Photograph: CLEP/CNSA
Chang'e 4, originally scheduled for 2015, is a precursor to China's stated goal of landing a human on the moon in the 2030s, an achievement that falls in line with their recent plans to become the world leader in space exploration. At the heart of those plans is its new generation of Long March-series rockets, which are slated to carry huge payloads and employ reusable components to make space exploration more efficient.
I mean we all know China is going to lead the 21st century, but now they’re just rubbing it in our sad little faces. Who knew a tyrannical one-party government would be able to crack enough eggs with its iron first to make the world’s largest human omelette? Progress heals all wounds, I suppose they’re telling themselves. China is proving itself capable of tackling nearly any engineering challenge at nearly any cost, and now the Middle Kingdom has its eyes cast upward on the icy, black reaches of space. China has several Mars missions planned for the next few years, a space station in orbit (for now), and has just finished constructing the world’s largest radio telescope. Now, Chinese news outlets have just announced that China will further its space program with a plan aimed at colonizing the moon – with insects, at least.
Hey, it’s a start.
The People’s Daily reports that China’s second lunar lander, the Chang’e 4, will land on the moon’s surface with a miniature “eco-base” meant to test the viability of establishing colonies on the moon. According to Zhang Yuanxun, the module’s designer, the pod will contain several symbiotic organisms which could create a stable miniature ecosystem:
The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the Moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis. Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the Moon.
Of course, there are some significant challenges the ecosystem will face, namely temperature control and protection from radiation. If it succeeds, however, the module could lead to tests of larger eco-modules. China’s Chang’e 4 will be sent to the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an 8-mile-deep (13 km) crater which stays in constant shadow. That region is of particular interest to space agencies who hope its abundant water ice could be of use to future colonists.
Chinese astronauts took already silkworms for a “spacewalk” aboard the Tiangong-2 space station last year.
Yeah that’s neat and all, but I’m more interested in what the irradiated silkworms and potatoes might evolve into given a few million years after they’ve been forgotten on the cold, desolate surface of the moon. Is this how life on Earth started? Some abandoned alien science experiment? It certainly sounds a lot cooler than those other guys’ stories. Maybe if they had pamphlets about an ancient alien race’s potatoes and silkworms instead of some dead dude with a funny name and his witnesses, I wouldn’t have to spray them with my hose in the dead of winter to get them to leave.
APDe vijver in Nahualac, met in het midden, onderwater, het schrijn.
Mexicaanse wetenschappers vermoeden dat de Mexicaanse Tetzacualco geconstrueerd werd als ‘miniatuurmodel van het universum.’ De constructie bevindt zich onder water.
Het heiligdom ligt in een vijver aan de rand van de Iztaccihuatl-vulkaan, nabij Mexico-Stad. De constructie behoort tot de archeologische site Nahualac. Sommige Meso-Amerikaanse mythen beschrijven de schepping van de wereld door een krokodil, genaamd Cipactli. Deze dreef op de oerwateren. Uit zijn lichaam werden aarde en lucht geschapen: het mythische begin van het universum.
Mede omdat het heiligdom midden in een vijver ligt, vermoeden archeologen dat het een weergave is van het scheppingsverhaal. Archeoloog Iris Hernández van het Mexicaanse Nationaal Instituut voor Antropologie en Geschiedenis leidde de opgravingen. Zij stelt dat het plaatsen van architectonische elementen in water veel zegt over het Meso-Amerikaanse denken.
APDe archeologische site bij Nahualac.
Hernández vermoedt dat de watertoevoer van de vijver uiterst gecontroleerd gebeurde. Zo konden Meso-Amerikanen een effect creëren waardoor het schrijn leek te drijven.
Nahualac
De opgravingen begonnen in 2016 waarna archeologen snel tekenen van menselijke aanwezigheid aantroffen. Denk daarbij aan keramiek, delen van obsidiaan-messen, steenkool en het mineraal schist, dat mogelijk werd gebruikt bij offers.
De nederzetting Nahualac bestond uit twee delen. Het eerste is het schrijn, dat bestaat uit opeengestapelde stenen. Het twee deel ligt 150 meter verder. Hier vonden archeologen voorwerpen die in verband kunnen worden gebracht met Tlaloc, de god van de regen. Archeologen denken dat de site in zijn geheel in het teken stond van deze god.
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Vreemde structuren ontdekt op Mars. Heeft NASA’s Curiosity sporen van leven gevonden?
Vreemde structuren ontdekt op Mars. Heeft NASA’s Curiosity sporen van leven gevonden?
Zijn er sporenfossielen gevonden op Mars? NASA’s Curiosity heeft op de rode planeet een aantal foto’s gemaakt van vreemde buisvormige structuren.
Barry DiGregorio van het Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology zegt dat ze opvallend veel gelijkenissen vertonen met sporenfossielen uit het Ordovicium die op aarde zijn ontdekt.
Ashwin Vasavada van NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Californië zei dat de structuren zeer klein zijn, waarschijnlijk één tot twee millimeter breed en vijf millimeter lang.
Sluiten niet uit
Ze zien er zo vreemd uit dat wetenschappers Curiosity terugstuurden om ze nader te onderzoeken.
“We sluiten niet uit dat het sporenfossielen zijn,” legde Vasavada uit. “Maar het is ook zeker niet het eerste waar we aan denken.”
Bioturbatie
Geoloog Pascal Lee van het SETI Institute dacht bij het zien van de foto’s gelijk aan bioturbatie, het proces waarbij sediment door organismen door elkaar wordt gewerkt en verplaatst.
Als voorbeeld hiervan noemt Lee gaten die door wormen worden gemaakt in de grond. Die gaten worden gevuld met sediment, fossiliseren en worden blootgesteld aan erosie, waardoor ze eruit komen te zien als buisvormige structuren.
Mysterie
Hoewel hij niet beweert dat de foto’s bewijs zijn voor bioturbatie op Mars, vindt Lee dit alles wel erg intrigerend en hoopt hij dat Curiosity meer tijd in het gebied zal doorbrengen om dit mysterie tot op de bodem uit te zoeken.
Meest mysterieuze ster in Melkweg blijft astronomen beroeren. Verklaart dit haar vreemde gedrag?
Meest mysterieuze ster in Melkweg blijft astronomen beroeren. Verklaart dit haar vreemde gedrag?
Tabby’s Ster of KIC 8462852, de meest tot de verbeelding sprekende ster in onze Melkweg, blijft astronomen beroeren.
Wetenschappers merken voortdurend schommelingen op in haar helderheid en er blijkt tussen de ster en ons af en toe iets groots en donkers te passeren.
Sommigen suggereerden eerder dat er buitenaards leven in het spel is.
Nieuwste ontwikkelingen
Anderen dachten dat de ster een erg afwijkend lichtpatroon vertoonde vanwege een gigantische meteoor die in de omgeving van de ster te vinden is.
Tabetha Boyajian van de Universiteit van Louisiana, naar wie de ster vernoemd is, onderzoekt KIC 8462852 al sinds 2015.
Onlangs publiceerde het team van Boyajian een artikel in het tijdschrift Astrophysical Journal Letters over de nieuwste ontwikkelingen.
Aliens
Sommige van haar collega’s denken dat andere planeten of zelfs activiteiten van aliens de ster aan het zicht onttrekken.
Boyajian: “Volgens de gegevens die afkomstig zijn van de Kepler-telescoop, is de helderheid van de ster door de jaren heen met 22 procent afgenomen.”
“Als een groep planeten het zicht zou belemmeren, dan zouden dat meer dan 50 planeten moeten zijn die allemaal perfect op één lijn staan om de helderheidsdipjes te kunnen verklaren,” voegde ze toe.
Ook UFO’s ziet ze niet als antwoord op het vreemde gedrag van de ster.
Stof
Zelf denkt Boyajian dat stof mogelijk de reden is dat de ster ‘aan- en uitgaat’. “In het heelal is er overal stof, dus astronomen herkennen de structuur ervan,” zei ze.
“Stof verklaart de ongewone activiteiten van de ster het best,” vervolgde ze.
Maar het team blijft met veel vragen zitten, bijvoorbeeld hoe het stof geproduceerd is en waarom het rond de ster hangt.
MENSEN HOREN VREEMDE GELUIDEN BOVEN NOORD- EN ZUID-HOLLAND, NEDERLAND
MENSEN HOREN VREEMDE GELUIDEN BOVEN NOORD- EN ZUID-HOLLAND, NEDERLAND
Nog steeds worden er overal ter wereld vreemde geluiden gehoord waarvoor geen logische verklaring te vinden is.
In Amerika krijgt nu de vorst de schuld van enorme explosies die de huizen op hun grondvesten doen schudden en ook in Nederland hoort men vreemde dingen.
We beginnen met Nederland, waar een lezer en haar collega beiden een vreemd geluid hebben gehoord. De één woont in Rijnsburg en de andere in Katwijk, dus grote kans dat beiden hetzelfde hebben gehoord.
De lezer stuurt (dank!) het volgende bericht:
Afgelopen donderdag 4-1-18 nacht kon moeilijk inslapen, hoorde ineens een enorm indringend zwaar motorgeluid alsof er een turbine boven me hing die stationair draaide op een plek, rond 02:38 uur AM
Bij vreemde geluiden ga ik altijd op mijn balkon kijken of er iets te zien is. De hemel was dicht bewolkt en ik zag dus niets, alleen een hele snelle felle rode flits. Het was een gevoel van een soort druk wat boven me hing en intuïtief leek het mij een heel groot object. Na 3of 5 minuten werd het geluid zwakker ik voelde dat het verder weg ging. Weer naar mijn bed gegaan en heb het geluid horen wegebben, maar het bleef piepen in mijn oren, wat ik wel vaker heb.
s 'Morgens op het lokale nieuws gekeken of iemand anders het ook had gezien, niets dus!
Ik woon in Rijnsburg.
Ik was niet thuis die dag, dus s 'avonds opende ik een mail van een jonge collega die diezelfde donderdagnacht is verstuurd, alleen heb ik dat niet meer gezien, met het volgende bericht over die donderdagnacht!
Mijn collega in Katwijk.
*Ik ben momenteel klaarwakker en er gebeurt me toch iets ontzettend raars! Ik hoorde opeens een heel laag en donker / duister geluid hier vlakbij mijn huis. Het was een hard geluid en echt heel duidelijk hoorbaar, alsof er een groot object met een niet ontzettend grote snelheid door de lucht heen vliegt.
Geen vliegtuig, die zijn hier binnen een minuut overgevlogen en het geluid is iets totaal anders. Een helikopter was het ook zeker niet, het is iets wat ik nog nooit gehoord heb! Nu het geluid minder sterk aanwezig is hoorde ik een soort van hoge trillende frequentie, die frequentie hoor ik nu nog steeds af en toe door de lucht. Ik hoor het geluid nu nog in de verte, samen met de hoge frequentie. Er cirkelt hier iets rond wat ik niet kan definiëren. Er zijn ook steeds windvlagen. HAARP? Iets met het weer beïnvloeden? Heel creepy dit. Heb wat op internet gespeurd en er zijn meer mensen die dit horen.
Naast Rijnsburg en Katwijk, kregen we ook een melding binnen (dank!) van twee dames die een vergelijkbaar geluid hoorden in Amsterdam en "dit best eng" vonden klinken.
In Amerika horen mensen op dit moment heel andersoortige geluiden. Geen diep brommend geluid of trompetgeluiden, maar dat van een enorme explosie, terwijl er niets te zien is.
Zoals dat gebeurde rond vier uur 's middags op Nieuwjaarsdag in het dorpje Pewamo in Michigan, waar volgens Bethanie Kramer een geluid te horen was wat je alleen kunt omschrijven als een explosie en waardoor het hele huis stond te trillen. Zij was uiteraard niet de enige inwoner die het had gehoord en de sociale media stonden dan ook bol van de verhalen.
Aangezien men geen verklaring heeft en het daar momenteel vriest, krijgt de vorst de schuld en wordt het verklaard als een soort ijsbeving. Deze klinken echter in werkelijkheid heel anders dan een explosie die het hele huis doet schudden.
Een dag later, op 2 januari 2018, gebeurde hetzelfde in delen van de staat Georgia. Ook daar meldden bewoners een enorme explosie die de huizen deed trillen en ook daar geen enkel spoor van iets dat dit zou kunnen veroorzaken.
Weer een dag later, op 3 januari 2018, meldden inwoners van de staat Tennessee vergelijkbare explosies en ook daar geen verklaring en dus krijgt ook daar de vorst de schuld.
Ook vorig jaar werden deze mysterieuze "booms" zoals ze worden genoemd, veelvuldig gehoord, voornamelijk in Amerika en Engeland. En dat gebeurde ook in tijden dat het niet vroor. Tot op de dag van vandaag is voor deze 64 "booms" geen verklaring gevonden.
Wij zijn natuurlijk nieuwsgierig of meer mensen iets vreemds hebben gehoord in de nacht van 4 januari 2018 en als laatste hebben we nog een vraag van een lezer die graag wat wil weten en reactie vraagt van onze lezers:
Al een tijdje check ik waar 's ochtends de zon opkomt en waar deze 's avonds ondergaat. Volgens mij moeten deze locaties ongeveer lijnrecht - dus in een hoek van ca. 180 graden - tegenover elkaar liggen. Maar wat schetst mijn verbazing dat deze hoek slechts iets meer dan 90 graden bedraagt. Is hier nu sprake van de beruchte Nibiru 'wobble' waardoor de aardas schommelt?
Mijn verzoek: zouden jullie eens een oproep kunnen plaatsen om lezers bovenstaand fenomeen te laten onderzoeken? Bij voorbaat dank.
UFO'S GEFILMD VANUIT RYANAIR VLIEGTUIG ONDERWEG NAAR EINDHOVEN, NEDERLAND ( VIDEO )
UFO'S GEFILMD VANUIT RYANAIR VLIEGTUIG ONDERWEG NAAR EINDHOVEN, NEDERLAND ( VIDEO )
De laatste jaren worden er opvallend veel ufo's waargenomen in de buurt van verkeersvliegtuigen, overal ter wereld.
Zo zijn er nu beelden van een ufo bij een vliegtuig in de buurt van Eindhoven, Liverpool en Paaseiland.
Wie ook de intelligentie is die achter de kleine ronde ufo's, één ding lijkt zeker en dat is dat ze belangstelling hebben voor vliegtuigen. Zo kregen we via een lezer (dank!) de volgende opnames toegestuurd.
Deze zijn gemaakt aan boord van een Ryanair toestel, onderweg van Milaan naar Eindhoven.
Hij schreef het volgende:
01/10/2017 17.33 uur boven Duitsland ( stuur screenshot tijd en lokatie )
Rayanair vlucht van Milaan naar Eindhoven.
Ik schat de afstand rond 400 meter, kleine witte bollen, zag er eerst een toen meerdere, denk 7 stuks, sommige versnelden en verdwenen, andere verdween achter vleugel.
In vliegtuig vlak voor vertrek in Milaan oppeens 4 uur vertraging, vervolgens met 55 minuten vertraging vertrokken, misschien had de vertraging te maken met de ufo dacht ik achteraf.
Beste wensen ook, beeld voor beeld kijken paar bij vleugel en drie samen richting wolk.
Hierna volgen de videobeelden die door de lezer werden opgestuurd en omdat het vaak niet meevalt om de ufo's te spotten, hebben we in bovenstaande plaatjes aangegeven waar te kijken.
Het vliegtuig bevond zich ten tijde van de opname in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, een plaatsje tussen Heidelberg en Kaiserslautern in Duitsland.
De tweede opname van een vliegtuig en ufo is gemaakt rond 17 of 18 december 2017 en het betrof hier een vliegtuig dat vertrok vanaf Paaseiland, verdere gegevens ontbreken. En dan een opname die al wat ouder is, maar nu pas boven water komt en die met recht spectaculair genoemd mag worden. De volgende afbeelding laat zien waar de ufo zich bevindt ten opzichte van het vliegtuig.
De opname schijnt gemaakt te zijn in 2015 en het betreft een vliegtuig dat is vertrokken vanaf Liverpool in Engeland. Als je de volgende bewegende beelden bekijkt, dan zie je rond de 32 seconden dat de ufo met een enorme snelheid plotseling wegvliegt. Een acceleratie die zo groot is dat geen vliegtuig dit ooit zou kunnen.
The Origin of ‘Oumuamua revealed: Mystery object came from the Pleiades
The Origin of ‘Oumuamua revealed: Mystery object came from the Pleiades
The year 2017 was of great importance as numerous groundbreaking discoveries were made in outer space. One of the highlights of 2017 was the arrival of the first interstellar object, first thought to be a comet, an asteroid, and then an alien spaceship. Discovered by a Hawaiian astronomer, it was quickly named ‘Oumuamua, which means “a messenger from afar arriving first,” reflecting the origin of the mystery object. However, the exact origin of the mystery rock remained a mystery, at least until now.
Astronomers believe they have finally tracked down the origin of the interstellar object.
According to experts, the cigar-shaped asteroid originated from the nearby “Pleiades moving group” of young stars, one of the closest to Earth and best perceived by the naked eye.
Astronomers believe how ‘Oumuamua was most likely expelled from its home star system, and sent out towards interstellar space.
Astronomers already know that the mystery object is composed of ice with a carbon-rich surface and has an extremely unusual orbit, and is traveling at around 26 km/ s, and will soon leave our solar system.
The hyperbolic trajectory of ʻOumuamua through the inner Solar System, with the Sun at the focus, showing its position every 7 days. The planet positions are fixed at the perihelion on September 9, 2017. Shown from a three-quarter perspective, roughly aligned to the plane of ʻOumuamua’s path.
‘Oumuamua was scanned using the Green Bank Telescope by astronomers from the Breakthrough Listen research program for any signs of alien signals, however, of intelligent signals have been identified so far, though further observations are planned, notes an article by the Conversation.
Now, a recent study published at arXiv gives us a glimpse of exactly where ‘Oumuamua may have originated from.
By reconstructing the object’s motion, Fabo Feng, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hertfordshire indicates how ‘Oumuamua most likely originated from the nearby “Pleiades moving group” of young stars, also known as the “Local Association”.
Astronomers believe it was likely ejected from its home solar system and sent out to travel interstellar space.
Based on the trajectory of ‘Oumuamua, this scientist simulated how ‘Oumuamua traveled through the galaxy and compared it to the movements of nearby stars. The conclusion is that the object passed 109 stars at a distance of 16 light years.
Five of these stars corresponded to the Pleiades or Local Association (a group of young stars that probably formed together), at a very slow speed in relation to their movement.
The study notes how it is likely that when Oumuamua was first expelled into outer space, it would have traveled at just enough speed to separate itself from the gravity of its home star, rather than at a much faster speed that would require even more energy.
An artist’s impression of the ‘Oumuamua asteroid, which scientists scanned for signs of intelligent life.
Photograph: ESO/M Kornmesser/PA
This means, according to the new research, that we would expect the object to move relatively slowly at the start of its interstellar travel, so it’s slow encounters with these five stars suggest that it was expelled from one of the groups.
Usually, stars move with an average speed as they form and gradually change velocity when encountering very large cosmic objects, such as massive stars and molecular clouds, and are therefore affected by their gravity.
“Unlike most nearby stars, Oumuamua moves very slowly compared to the average movement of the rest of the galaxy. This suggests that it has only been traveling in interstellar space for a relatively short time and has not had the opportunity to find many massive objects that accelerate it, “the study emphasizes.
As to what the asteroid ejected from initially, this study considers as a plausible scenario that Oumuamua was ejected from a binary star system consisting of two stars orbiting closely together, explains Feng in an article written in The Conversation.
“Objects orbiting one of the stars in a binary system will be strongly affected by the gravity of the other and so can be more easily ejected from the system than if it had just one star.”
Furthermore, Feng indicates how ‘Oumuamua is probably just the tip of the iceberg. And that there are likely more than 46m similar interstellar objects crossing the solar system every year.
Artist’s illustration of planet formation. Credit: NASA / Lynette Cook
One of the highlights of 2017 was the discovery of the first object in our solar system that definitely came from somewhere else. At first we thought it was a comet, then an asteroid, and now the International Astronomical Union has reclassified it as something new entirely, an interstellar object. The Hawaiian astronomers who discovered it aptly named it 'Oumuamua, which means "a messenger from afar arriving first", reflecting that this object is like a scout sent from the past to reach out to us.
Research has already helped us learn a lot about 'Oumuamua's rare cigar-like shape, what it's made of (ice with a carbon-rich surface) and its highly unusual orbit, which will take it out of our solar system at a speed of around 26 km/s. The Breakthrough Listen research program has even investigated whether 'Oumuamua is an alien space ship by scanning the object for life forms with the Green Bank Telescope. No intelligent signals have been identified so far, though further observations are planned.
Now my latest study gives us a glimpse of exactly where 'Oumuamua may have come from. Reconstructing the object's motion, my research suggests it probably came from the nearby "Pleiades moving group" of young stars, also known as the "Local Association". It was likely ejected from its home solar system and sent out to travel interstellar space.
Based on 'Oumuamua's trajectory, I simulated how it has probably travelled through the galaxy and compared this to the motions of nearby stars. I found the object passed 109 stars within a distance of 16 light years. It went by five of these stars from in the Local Association (a group of young stars likely to have formed together), at a very slow speed relative to their movement.
'Oumuamua’s journey.
It's likely that when 'Oumuamua was first ejected into space, it was travelling at just enough speed to break away from the gravity of its planet or star of origin, rather than at a much faster speed that would require even more energy. This means we'd expect the object to move relatively slowly at the start of its interstellar journey, and so its slow encounters with these five stars suggests it was ejected from one of the group.
When was it kicked out of its home?
Stars typically move with an average speed when they are formed and gradually change speed as they encounter very large objects, such as massive stars and molecular clouds and are affected by their gravity. Unlike most nearby stars, 'Oumuamua moves very slowly compared to the average motion of the rest of the galaxy. This suggests it has only been travelling in interstellar space for a relatively short time and hasn't had a chance to encounter many massive objects that would speed it up.
We also have evidence for 'Oumuamua's relatively young age from the colour of its surface. Outside of the protection of a star's magnetic field, objects in space are bombarded with cosmic rays and interstellar dust and gas that gradually alter their surfaces and turn them very red in colour. But 'Oumuamua has a more neutral colour, suggesting it has only been impacted by cosmic rays for, at most, hundreds of million years rather than for the billions of years that our solar system has existed.
Young visitor. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC BY-SA
How was it ejected?
'Oumuamua is extremely elongated and has quite a different shape from other objects in our solar system. It was probably formed by a relatively high-energy process such as a collision, or ejected from a forming star. Most objects in the outer part of a planetary system are made more of ice and most objects in the inner regions are made more of rocks. Since 'Oumuamua is a more even mix of iceand rocks, it's likely it came from the middle part of a solar system, similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that features a mixture of icy and rocky asteroids.
Perhaps the most plausible scenario is that 'Oumuamua was ejected from a closely separated binary star system made of two stars closely orbiting each other. Objects orbiting one of the stars in a binary system will be strongly affected by the gravity of the other and so can be more easily ejected from the system than if it had just one star.
'Oumuamua is probably just the tip of the iceberg. My research suggests there are likely more than 46m similar interstellar objects crossing the solar system every year. Most of them will be too far away for us to see with our current telescopes. But new telescopes and surveys should soon be able to find these interstellar messengers, which may be sending us important information about how stars and planets formed. Studying more objects like 'Oumuamua will enable us to work out how much debris is left over from star formation and how much this adds to the mass of our galaxy.
Another reason to study these interstellar objects is that they could one day threaten to collide with the Earth and cause catastrophic events such as mass extinctions. The more we know, the better prepared we'll be if that day ever comes.
REAL-LIFE X FILES - The final part of Britain’s real-life X Files has been released – but does the Government have something to hide?
REAL-LIFE X FILES - The final part of Britain’s real-life X Files has been released – but does the Government have something to hide?
Government officials have finally finished the ten-year process of declassifying Britain's real-life X Files, but some think they've been made deliberately hard to access. Former MoD alien expert Nick Pope wonders what's really been going on
EXCLUSIVE
By George Harrison
THE MoD has spent ten years releasing a trickle of declassified files relating to UFO sightings... and now the final three documents have been made public.
Nick Pope, former UFO investigator at the MoD, has suggested that alien enthusiasts won't be too chuffed with this final release
Over the past decade, the files, which have been drip-fed into the public domain to hush any claims of a conspiracy, were ushered out without any fanfare from the Government, with batches steadily and unceremoniously cropping up online.
The final three documents appeared on the National Archives website on January 1, and are all dated from 1986.
But, even after spending the past three decades behind the closed doors of the MoD, they're unlikely to satisfy conspiracy theorists.
SOURCED
Past file releases have included eyewitness accounts of UFO sightings
Unlike many of the releases before it, this final wave of files won't be available online, and the timing of their publication is sure to cause more a stir among the UFO community.
Officials originally decided to circulate the documents to save the hassle of responding to thousands of freedom of information requests about the Government's knowledge of UFOs.
But Nick Pope, who used to run the Ministry of Defence's UFO project, says conspiracy theorists are likely to be "incensed" by the questions thrown up by the final file dump.
Now, believers will want to know why the Government waited ten years to release these files, and why they've been made so hard to get hold of.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
The release of these files prove governments are taking alien life more seriously than we thought... and some reckon they're still hiding something
Why January 1?
One reason why UFO hunters are unlikely to be happy is the precise timing of the release, on New Years Day.
Nick says: "This looks suspiciously as if The National Archives tried to sneak out this release when nobody was looking."
Some will be asking whether this was an attempt to bury the release by shuffling it out on a bank holiday when everyone was in bed.
It's true that January 1 is a common release date for public files, but hardcore UFO hunters will want to know why the MoD has held on to these for so long in the first place.
SOURCED
Previous files include sketches and police reports relating to UFO sightings
Is there a link to the Pentagon's UFO research?
This final wave of files, which caps off a ten-year release programme, was published after the big news broke that the American government was hiding its own X Files.
Nick said: "Coming so soon after the revelations about the Pentagon's UFO program, this will raise suspicion in the UFO community that there's been co-ordination between the US and UK government on this."
Conspiracy theorists may also wonder whether the MoD's UFO reports ever tied in with the Pentagon's £16 million investigation into the existence of UFOs and aliens.
Dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the secret project ran for five years, proving that both US and UK governments take aliens more seriously than we all thought.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
News about the Pentagon's own UFO research project will cause some to question whether the MoD's research is linked
Why aren't they online?
Unlike many of the other X Files, the final three documents haven't been digitised.
That means anyone who wants to read them will have to either visit the National Archives in person or fork out to order a copy of the documents.
While hardcore alien chasers are unlikely to be put off by this, it does make it harder for members of the public to access the declassified files.
Nick has previously been critical of the way the release has been handled, and he says having to pay for the final files is sure to outrage the UFO community.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
The files don't prove that there's 'smoking gun' evidence of alien life, but it does include fascinating details of UFO sightings
He added: "Having worked on the MoD's UFO investigations in the Nineties I'm pleased that these files are finally in the open.
"There's no smoking gun in these files that says UFOs are extraterrestrial, but there are plenty of interesting sighting reports and other related material relating to MoD research on the subject.
"These recent revelations in the UK and the US show that whatever you believe about the UFO mystery, some of us in government took the subject seriously."
Sergey Trushkin, an astronomer at the Special astrophysical Observatory of the RAS, spoke about why scientists are interested in the mysterious fast radiosystemy, the so-called radio signals of the aliens, and explained how Russian telescope RATAN-600 had a unique chance to reveal their essence.
«Given our modest capabilities, we expect that we manage to fix in the best case three to five such outbursts in a year of observations. On the other hand, even if we can find at least one event at the frequencies where we are searching, it will change radically the understanding of the nature of these signals,» said Trushkin, speaking at the annual conference «high energy Astrophysics» in the walls of the IKI in Moscow.
The call of the cosmos
For the first time about the existence of a mysterious flares of radio emission (fast radio burst FRB), open accidentally during observations of radio pulsars using the Parkes telescope (Australia), astronomers began in 2007.
«Why don’t we find these phenomena 50 years ago, when the first radio telescopes? The problem was that our predecessors were not so high-quality radio that exists today. They were discovered with the help of parks upgrade of its detectors, which allowed the pioneers to understand that these interference signals are not born on Earth, and flashes from distant galaxies» — said the scientist.
In subsequent years, failed to find traces of another nine such bursts. The comparison showed that they can have an artificial origin, and even potentially be signals of extraterrestrial civilizations due to the unexplained periodicity in the structure.
Last spring it became clear that the source of one of such FRB-flares were an elliptical galaxy, located six billion light years from the milky Way, and this led the scientists to conclude that such outbursts are born during the merging of neutron stars or other compact objects, turning into a black hole.
This theory suffered a crushing defeat in March 2016. Using the same parks, canadian researchers found that one of the first found flares — burst FRB 121102 is re-originated at the same point in the constellation Auriga, where it was found six years ago.
«Now the number of theories that explain such outbursts, much higher than the number of those phenomena known to science. We are the observers and the experimenters are more interested in opening events and receiving new data, which our colleagues-theorists can use to create their theories,» continues Trushkin.
Two key features of «radio alien», as the scientist, is their high brightness and extremely low duration — allow you to bypass the main drawback of the RATAN-600 — the failure of any continuous monitor one point on the sky.
During observations of FRB Russian telescope will scan the entire night sky, watching his every segment for a very short time. This will allow, despite the modest angle of view RATAN, cover a large enough area of the sky, which is only four times less than the similar indicator for the telescope parks.
«We have long thought, what frequency to choose for these observations, and highlighted the importance 4.7 GHz. All other bursts were detected at frequencies of 1.4 GHz or less, but these observations need a fairly expensive installation for which we simply have no money. High frequency, in turn, reduce the number of channels necessary for the conduction of observations, and allow us to go in the area on which the FRB had never seen,» continues Trushkin.
The last car space train
According to him, these observations are in fact «hobby» for employees of the Observatory — will lead to the Western sector of ring of RATAN-600, previously mothballed, and with the help of four backup detectors, sets of filters and other radio equipment, which was purchased in the pre-crisis years and were not used.
«We were in preliminary talks with the Fund Yuri Milner supporting such initiatives, however, nothing substantial, they have not ended. On the other hand, we need a little money, about 30 thousand dollars to double the number of detectors and significantly increase the probability of detection of new outbreaks» — said the scientist.
As noted by the astronomer Russian scientists will focus their efforts on observations of the portion of the sky where the FRB 121102. Recurrent outbreaks as hope Trushkin and his associates, will increase the chances of RATAN-600 to the detection of at least one such phenomena and will allow us to study it at wavelengths that are inaccessible to other telescopes.
Work updated the RATAN-600 scientists have checked on two sites — one of the brightest pulsars located in our Galaxy, as well as trying to detect FRB 121102. According to Trushkina, in August this year his team «caught» the signal coming from the same point, that this re-surge.
CC BY-SA 3.0 / Pticy uleteli / radio Telescope RATAN-600 in Special astrophysical Observatory RAS,CC BY-SA 3.0 / Pticy uleteli / radio Telescope RATAN-600 in Special astrophysical Observatory of RAS
While there is no assurance that managed to fix FRB-flash, since that time the telescope was not yet fully configured. Therefore, astronomers were unable to determine the distance to the «alien signal» and calculate its exact coordinates.
On the other hand, the other two radio Observatory — telescopes in the United States GBT and WSRT in the Netherlands — re-fixed burst FRB 121102 around the same time, which confirms the hypothesis of Russian scientists.
«These observations of colleagues and our preliminary data suggests that FRB 121102 is not simply a variable and recurring source. He can emit such a pulse kind of queues. In other words, it is able to produce several outbreaks in a single month, and then «silence» for a week, a month or conditional a thousand days,» says Trushkin.
According to him, today the main problem for the RATAN-600 is time. While such observations can only lead to Russian telescope, however, those same frequencies will be available for megatelecom SKA, the construction of which will begin in South Africa next year.
«SKA and the canadian project CHIME is expected the participants will find dozens of similar outbreaks every day. While they have not yet put into operation, we have the opportunity to make a unique contribution to the study of FRB-outbreaks due to the high frequencies at which we work, and somehow compete on the international level,» concludes astronomer.
A mysterious UFO sighting over RAF Cosford could have been investigated in a top-secret Pentagon study, a leading expert has claimed.
The Pentagon could have investigated the UFO sighting over RAF Cosford
In 1993, an MoD police patrol reported a large triangular craft over the Midlands airbase which fired a beam at the ground before speeding off.
It was one of a dozen UFOs reported flying at speed over the skies of Britain at the same time.
Nick Pope, who ran the MoD’s UFO project, believes the ‘high-profile’ event, dubbed the ‘Cosford Incident’, formed part of the AdvancedAviation Threat Identification Program.
The programme, run secretly by the American government, operated between 2007 and 2012, but its existence was only revealed last month in December by US-based journalists.
However it generated a 490-page report consisting of UFO sightings from across the world.
Mr Pope, who wrote a report on the incident at the time, told the Express & Star: “The Cosford Incident was the most high-profile and compelling UFO incident that took place during my time on the MoD’s UFO project in the early Nineties.
“It is probably among the best cases in our entire archive, that goes back decades and includes around 12,000 sightings.
“It is inconceivable to me that this wouldn’t be one of the incidents mentioned in the secret US report. I’m sure the Americans knew all about the Cosford Incident, and maybe conducted some discreet enquiries of their own.”
On March 31 at around 1.15am, MoD officers reported ‘a vast triangular shaped craft flying at about 200ft’. The craft made a low humming noise and fired a beam of light which swept the ground. It left trails of luminous vapour and sped off in a South East direction.
Most eyewitnesses described the craft as having two white lights, but some said there was a third giving an impression the object was triangular.
In his report at the time, Mr Pope said there was a UFO of ‘unknown origin’ operating in the UK air space without showing up on radar.
He said the incident was of ‘considerable defence significance’ and recommended it for further investigation.
Although no new details have come to light, Mr Pope believes the severity of the event would have prompted the American government to carry out its own investigation.
Nick Pope, who ran Britain's UFO project between 1991 and 1994
He added: “Officials connected with the Pentagon’s AATIP project have disclosed that it (the programme) generated a 490-page report detailing UFO sightings from not just the US, but from all around the world.
“If US intelligence found any answers (about the Cosford Incident), it’s not clear whether they told British defence chiefs. I’d left the MoD by the time AATIP was set up, so I don’t know whether the Americans briefed us on their findings.”
UFO websites claimed that the event was a major indicator alien life existed.
But sceptics believed there could have been different causes. The day before the sighting, a Russian radio satellite was jetted into the sky and the debris from its rocket booster fell back down to Earth.
The severity of the Cosford Incident was made even more extra-ordinary because at the same time, dozens of triangular-shaped UFOs were reported moving at speed in the sky across western Britain. They were also reported in other areas of the Midlands on the night. One family from Rugeley even claimed they chased a UFO across the Staffordshire countryside into a field before it disappeared.
The first sighting took place in Somerset the day before at around 8.30pm, said Mr Pope.
Then at 9.30pm in Quantock Hills, Somerset, a police officer with a group of scouts reported seeing aircraft described as ‘looking like two Concordes side by side and joined together’.Mr Pope said: “The reports came in thick and fast and when I arrived at work the following morning I received a steady stream of reports.
“It was soon clear that I had a major UFO event on my hands. One of the most interesting reports came from a member of the public in Rugeley, Staffordshire, who reported a UFO that he estimated as being 200 metres in diameter.
“He and other family members told me how they had chased the object in their car and got extremely close to it, believing it had landed in a nearby field.
“When they got there a few seconds later, there was nothing to be seen.
“Many of the descriptions related to a triangular-shaped craft or of the lights perceived as being on the underside of such a craft.
“Indeed, in an apparent coincidence these sighting occurred three years to the very day after the famous wave of sightings in Belgium that had led to F-16 fighters being scrambled to intercept a UFO being tracked on radar.
Mr Pope, who ran the British government’s UFO project between 1991 and 1994, believes UFO’s exist ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. And he believes some of their origins could be other-worldly, or extraterrestrial.
He recently tweeted: “Existence of UFOs proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, claims former Pentagon UFO investigator. Having run the UK MoD’s #UFO project I agree, but I contend that the true nature of the phenomenon remains unexplained. It’s possible but not proven that some UFOs may be extraterrestrial.”
Fuhr, a retired farmer who lives in Langenburg, Sask was in a cheerful mood when I called him one afternoon in the summer. I was doubtful that he would want to speak to me after having done countless interviews about his experience. But Fuhr was still happy to chat, and even took us outside of Langenburg to the field where he saw five saucer-shaped objects floating above the ground.
I originally heard about Fuhr’s story from retired Leader-Post photographer Don Healy. Healy went out to Fuhr’s farm in 1974 and took pictures of him pointing to the markings the saucers left in the field. Of all the stories Healy had accrued during his more than 40 years at the Leader-Post, this was my favourite. I never got tired of hearing it.
Edwin Fuhr indicates where multiple flying saucers landed on his farm in Langenburg, Saskatchewan in September, 1974.
DON HEALY / REGINA LEADER-POST
I was hooked on The X-Files when I was a kid, and ate up UFO books before you could read about the subject on the Internet. So naturally, I was drawn to Fuhr’s story.
After seeing an interview with Fuhr on YouTube that was done by Russell Klitch, I decided it couldn’t wait any longer. Even though it was a story that had been told before, I wanted to speak to Fuhr myself.
Fuhr is of course only one half of the story. There’s also the RCMP member who investigated his sighting, Ron Morier. Like Fuhr, I was surprised at how willing Morier was to talk about the sighting, about which he has also been interviewed several times.
Morier has also done an incredible job preserving the story by keeping a file of paperwork, photos and newspaper clippings from over the years.
The response I got after doing the story proved that after all these years, Fuhr’s story still draws interest. I got one email from a man from California who was adamant that Fuhr was lying. I got another from a man who attempted to explain the technology behind the UFOs Fuhr saw, which he referred to as “unifying field oscillation.”
I prefer not to tell people whether or not I believe Fuhr. Part of what makes his story so enjoyable is deciding on that for yourself. The uncertainty is what makes it so intriguing. There is no concrete proof of UFOs landing in that field, just the account of a friendly farmer who did not have a reputation for making up stories.
The lack of hard evidence, but compelling account from a likeable person makes Fuhr’s sighting the quintessential UFO story. UFO enthusiasts want to believe him, and skeptics are incensed that Fuhr still won’t concede what he saw.
I guess that old X-Files slogan applies here too: The truth is out there.
Why the dreams of UFO enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s technology
Why the dreams of UFO enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s technology
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE VIA THE NEW YORK TIMES
In an undated handout image taken from a video released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object. UFOs have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. Astronomers have their noses pressed against the windows of the unknown, wanting to believe in life elsewhere just like many outer space enthusiasts.
By Dennis Overbye, New York Times News Service
Hey, Mr. Spaceman, Won’t you please take me along? I won’t do anything wrong. Hey, Mr. Spaceman, Won’t you please take me along for a ride?
So sang the Byrds in 1966, after strange radio bursts from distant galaxies called quasars had excited people about the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.
I recalled those words recently when reading the account of a pair of Navy pilots who were outmaneuvered and outrun by a UFO off the coast of San Diego in 2004. Cmdr. David Fravor said he had no idea what he had seen.
“But,” he added, “I want to fly one.”
His story was part of a bundle of material released recently about a supersecret $22 million Pentagon project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, aimed at investigating UFOs. The project was officially killed in 2012, but now it’s being resurrected as a nonprofit organization.
Disgruntled that the government wasn’t taking the possibility of alien visitors seriously, a group of former defense officials, aerospace engineers and other space fans have set up their own group, To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. One of its founders is Tom DeLonge, a former punk musician, record producer and entrepreneur, who is also head of the group’s entertainment division.
For a minimum of $200, you can join and help finance their research into how UFOs do whatever it is they do, as well as telepathy and “a point-to-point transportation craft that will erase the current travel limits of distance and time” by using a drive that “alters the space-time metric” — that is, a warp drive going faster than the speed of light, Einstein’s old cosmic speed limit.
“We believe there are transformative discoveries within our reach that will revolutionize the human experience, but they can only be accomplished through the unrestricted support of breakthrough research, discovery and innovation,” says the group’s website.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for progress on telepathy or warp drive, but I agree with at least one thing that one official with the group said. That was Steve Justice, a former engineer at Lockheed Martin’s famous Skunk Works, where advanced aircraft like the SR-71 high-altitude superfast spy plane were designed.
“How dare we think that the physics we have today is all that there is,” he said in an interview published recently in HuffPost.
I could hardly agree more, having spent my professional life in the company of physicists and astronomers trying to poke out of the cocoon of present knowledge into the unknown, to overturn Einstein and what passes for contemporary science. Lately, they haven’t gotten anywhere.
The last time physicists had to deal with faster-than-light travel was six years ago, when a group of Italy-based physicists announced that they had seen the subatomic particles known as neutrinos going faster than light. It turned out they had wired up their equipment wrong.
So far Einstein is still the champ. But surely there is so much more to learn. A lot of surprises lie ahead, but many of the most popular ideas on how to transcend Einstein and his peers are on the verge of being ruled out. Transforming science is harder than it looks.
While there is a lot we don’t know, there is also a lot we do know. We know how to turn on our computers and let gadgets in our pocket navigate the world. We know that when physical objects zig and zag through a medium like air, as UFOs are said to do, they produce turbulence and shock waves. NASA engineers predicted to the minute when the Cassini spacecraft would dwindle to a wisp of smoke in Saturn’s atmosphere last fall.
In moments like this, I take comfort in what the great Russian physicist and cosmologist Yakov Zeldovich, one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, once told me. “What science has already taken, it will not give back,” he said.
Scientists are not the killjoys in all this.
In the astronomical world, the border between science fact and science fiction can be very permeable, perhaps because many scientists grew up reading science fiction. And astronomers forever have their noses pressed up against the window of the unknown. They want to believe more than anybody, and I count myself among them.
But they are also trained to look at nature with ruthless rigor and skepticism. For astronomers, the biggest problem with E.T. is not the occasional claim of a mysterious light in the sky, but the fact that we are not constantly overwhelmed with them.
Half a century ago, the legendary physicist Enrico Fermi concluded from a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation that even without warp drive, a single civilization could visit and colonize all the planets in the galaxy in a fraction of the 10-billion-year age of the Milky Way.
“Where are they?” he asked.
Proponents of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, have been debating ever since. One answer I like is the “zoo hypothesis,” according to which we have been placed off-limits, a cosmic wildlife refuge.
Another answer came from Jill Tarter, formerly the director of research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. “We haven’t looked hard enough,” she said when I asked her recently.
If there was an iPhone sitting under a rock on the moon or Mars, for example, we would not have found it yet. Our own latest ideas for interstellar exploration involve launching probes the size of postage stamps to Alpha Centauri.
In the next generation, they might be the size of mosquitoes. By contrast, the dreams of some UFO enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s technology.
Still, we keep trying.
In the fall, when a strange object — an interstellar asteroid now named Oumuamua — was found cruising through the solar system, astronomers’ thoughts raced to the Arthur C. Clarke novel “Rendezvous With Rama,” in which the object was an alien spaceship. Two groups have been monitoring Oumuamua for alien radio signals, so far to no avail.
Meanwhile, some astronomers have speculated that the erratic dimming of a star known as “Boyajian’s star” or “Tabby’s star,” after the astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, could be caused by some gigantic construction project orbiting the star. That has not worked out, but none of the other explanations — dust or a fleet of comets — have, either.
A pair of Harvard astronomers suggested in the spring that mysterious sporadic flashes of energy known as fast radio bursts coming from far, far away are alien transmitters powering interstellar spacecraft carrying light sails. “Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence,” astronomer Avi Loeb said in a news release from Harvard. “Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”
UFO investigations are nothing new. The most famous was the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which ran from 1952 to 1970 and examined more than 12,000 sightings.
Most UFO sightings turn out to be swamp gas and other atmospheric anomalies, Venus, weird reflections or just plain hoaxes. But there is a stubborn residue, a few percent that resist easy explication, including Fravor’s story. But that’s a far cry from proving they are alien or interstellar.
I don’t know what to think about these stories, often told by sober, respected and professional observers — police officers, pilots, military officials — in indelible detail. I always wish I could have been there to see it for myself.
Then I wonder how much good it would do to see it anyway.
Recently I ran into my friend Mark Mitton, a professional magician, in a restaurant. He came over to the table and started doing tricks. At one point he fanned the card deck, asked my daughter to pick one, and then asked her to shuffle the deck, which she did expertly.
Mitton grabbed the deck and sprayed the cards in the air. There was my daughter’s card stuck to a mirror about 5 feet away. How did it get there? Not by any new physics. Seeing didn’t really help.
As modern psychology and neuroscience have established, the senses are an unreliable portal to reality, whatever that is.
Something might be happening, but we don’t know what it is. E.T., if you’re reading this, I’m still waiting to take my ride.
Anyone driving across a barren interstate freeway at night has likely looked up into the sky and wondered about the possibility of witnessing the unexpected. For people who have held beliefs in extra-terrestrials or alien craft, the entire history of the UFO phenomenon is an obsession that goes beyond mere fascination.
Books, movies, and television help alien seekers conceptualize what an encounter could potentially look like. Perhaps no show has flown as close to the sun with depicting real-life accounts of the UFO phenomenon than The X-Files, the seminal sci-fi series from Fox and Chris Carter.
When Carter’s series made its return to Fox for a revival in 2016, it honed in on a new extra-terrestrial threat for the digital age. Ever since they successfully blurred the line between fiction and real world events when the pilot debuted in 1993, The X-Files has depicted triangle-shaped crafts, or disc shaped crafts of various sizes, or even more recently in the new episodes, ARV’s - Alien Reproduction Vehicle’s. But the series drew from real world belief in the phenomenon, as well as the belief in global conspiracies.
The Basis for The X-Files
Chris Carter’s pre-pilot research revealed something startling. He read a Roper Organization survey stated that three percent of the U.S. population believes they have been abducted by aliens. When Carter would later direct the “Duane Barry” episode, a fill-in crew member revealed his brother-in-law believed he had been abducted. Carter’s persistent mantra in the early years was that the show had to be “scientifically plausible.” This meant that a lot of the research was pulled from real UFOlogy archives.
One key plot element in the series has been the Roswell incident, which the Deep Throat character first mentioned in season one’s final episode “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” when he comments that “Roswell was a smokescreen.” It was a comment that would be mirrored by the old man in “My Struggle I” from the new event series.
The Roswell incident from 1947 in New Mexico has remained the holy-grail source for the subject, touching on most of people’s concerns. As The X-Files heavily played up in the first episode of season 10, “My Struggle,” they showed the military retrieving wreckage from an unidentified craft, and using intimidation, misdirection, deniability, or direct threats to hide from the public secret military technology, or the existence of extra-terrestrials. What is known about the incident is that an event took place in July of 1947. The public might not have known about it had it not been for a military press release on Tuesday, July 8th that confirmed a disc-shaped object that “landed” on a Ranch, just outside of Roswell Army Air Field.
"Are They Really A Hoax?"
The Roswell story caused a sensation for hours in the press before a second story was released that the wreckage of a weather balloon was recovered. Major Jesse A. Marcel was the head of 509th Bomb group intelligence office at the time of the incident. But the story of a landing wouldn’t jive with one of the eyewitness accounts of a foreman named William Brazel, who was working for rancher J.B. Foster at the time.
William and his son Vernon claimed to have come across an area strewn with unfamiliar material that was part of some collected wreckage. In a matter of days, Major Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt of the Counter-Intelligence Corps contacted them and took the materials. In spite of residential eye witness accounts by the Wilmonts, the flying saucer story was debunked by the Roswell Dispatch by July 9th. Interest in the story was revived by the late ‘70s, but most of the eyewitnesses had passed away by then.
Many UFO believers regard the incident as a key moment, pointing fingers at segments of the military, whom they say created smokescreens to cover up alien technology, or secret military aircrafts. Original witnesses had offered conflicting stories; some had described a crashed disc, with two hundred yards in diameter that formed a long, thin strip some three quarters of a mile long, between two hundred to three hundred feet wide, and at one end was a deep gouge in the ground, ten feet wide, and five hundred feet long. That account would have indicated a significant amount of debris.
Some of the wreckage recovered had “I-beams” which Marcel’s son described as having hieroglyphic-type characters. These first accounts would describe something fairly mundane, and likely a crashed experimental craft in development near Roswell Army Air Field, or a shot down foreign craft.
The mythology of Roswell became evident here. There were no initial reports of an intact craft or alien bodies recovered. In 1974, TV researcher Robert Carr put out comments about a craft, and frozen alien bodies being held in Wright-Patterson AFB, related to a crash in 1948 that was later debunked.
Despite the falsehood, it triggered interest in the UFO research community, and the Roswell case started to be taken seriously. Other figures have elaborated the story with greater claims, such as Frank J. Kaufman, Glenn Dennis, Jim Ragsdale, “Pappy” Henderson, Mr. Rowe, and Major Edwin Easley. Several figures even claiming there were two crash sites, which has only complicated the narrative about what was found.
Some theories suggest that a Japanese Balloon bomb from World War II was recovered, or a V-2 rocket that veered off course, as part of the MOGUL project, a project developed with sensitive instruments and high altitude balloons to monitor soviet nuclear test activity.
Roswell’s Rumble is Chris Carter’s Treasure
What The X-Files did do well was add fragments from the known history to create an unsettling agenda in the series’ mythology. Carter and Co. borrowed much of the tone of the 1960s ABC sci-fi series The Invaders, which starred Roy Thinnes, a future X-Files acting alumnus who played the character of Jeremiah Smith.
In The Invaders, Thinnes played David Vincent, a man who witnesses a flying saucer land with alien beings intent on taking over the Earth. Over the course of the series, Vincent manages to gather a small circle of people who believe him, and eventually the invaders change their plans.
The series had an obvious parallel to the plight of the X-Files iconic villain. “We had a perfect conspiracy with an alien race,” The Cigarette Smoking Man ominously intoned in The X-Files season six episode, "One Son"; “Aliens who were coming to reclaim the planet and destroy all human life. Our job was to secretly prepare the way for their invasion. To create for them a race of human-alien hybrids. They were good plans, right plans. Kept secret for over fifty years, ever since the crash at Roswell.”
Some of the events in the series that speak of a clandestine meeting between the Colonists and the Syndicate in 1973 revealed in “One Son” mirror a rumored alleged clandestine meeting in February 1954 at Muroc, now Edwards, air force base, with on-going contact between Extra-Terrestrials and eminent people, including Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Which has also lead to the argument with some UFOologists that recovered technology from Roswell was “reversed-engineered,” and lead to developments like the current laser, transistors, microchips, Velcro, and microwave ovens. It has also been argued that such "reverse-engineering" gave the United States leverage with such contact. Deep Throat certainly suggested the Military use of “reverse-engineering” in season one’s second episode.
In The X-Files season five episode “Redux,” Michael Kritschgau offered up an counter explanation regarding Roswell as a cover, a red herring for other agendas.
“The Military saw a good thing in ’47 when the Roswell story broke. The more we denied it, the more people believed it was true. Aliens had landed – a made-to-order cover story for generals looking to develop the national war chest.”
Kritschgau further noted that such official investigations as Grudge, Twinkle, Project Blue Book, and Majestic 12 fed into the belief in UFOs, Kritschgau also noted that the first supersonic flight was in 1947, after which, every experimental flight was considered a U.F.O. All of these points are part of the historical lore.
The new X-Files episode, “My Struggle” depicted a version of the Roswell Crash, while also citing several other events, including the Kenneth Arnoldsightings from June 24, 1947, near Mount Rainier, Washington.Other events noted were the Maury Island sighing from June 21, 1947 near Tacoma, Washington, as well as the 1952 UFO flap over Washington D.C.
The Arnold sighting is notable. A pilot was commanding his own light aircraft to Pendleton Oregon from a job at Chehalis Air Service, Washington State, when he found himself near a location where an aircraft had vanished. At an altitude of 9,200 feet (2,760 m), he saw a bright flash, which he described as a “screwy formation… a chain of nine peculiar-looking aircraft” flying north to south at approximately 9,000 feet (2,790 m) elevation and going in a definite direction at an angle of 170 degrees.
The objects approached Mount Rainier at a very high speed, some of them changing or dipping direction. He realized they were moving much too fast to be a flock of birds. Upon landing in Yakima, Arnold described what he had witnessed to his fellow pilots. He would later describe them as half-moon-shaped oval in front and convex in the rear. At first, the news of his sighting was treated as a hoax, but Arnold’s impeccable record and integrity prompted people to take him more seriously. Arnold had assumed it was some sort of secret weapon or Soviet aircraft invading US airspace, an idea that was reinforced in private by a former USAF officer, that it was some rocket-powered jet, skeptics have suggested he witnessed a flock of pelicans, but this ignores the little known fact that Arnold had another sighting in the same area five days later at La Grande Airfield, Oregon.
Another key sighting that was visually referenced in the “My Struggle” teaser was the Maury Island incident. Harold A. Dahl, a harbor patrolman at Tacoma, was on his boat with his fifteen-year-old son, his dog, and two crewman on the 21st at around 2 p.m. when they saw five doughnut-shaped objects with rows of portholes circling around a sixth object. They estimated it was about 2,000 feet (600 m) above the water at the Puget Sound. They estimated that the objects were about 100 feet wide with a 25-foot hole in the middle.
While landing on the beach of Maury Island, Dahl took several photographs. One of the ships appeared to be trying to repair the other ship. There was a thunderous explosion, and the entire object emitted dark, almost molten, rock-like material and sheets of an extremely light metallic substance. Being directly under the shower, Dahl’s dog was killed, his son’s arm was injured, and the boat was damaged. After the UFOs headed out to sea, Dahl tried to get help via his radio, but it was dead. Dahl and others collected sample evidence and took it back to Tacoma to his boss, Fred Crissman. Soon, Kenneth Arnold was investigating the incident, and within days had his own encounter.
Lastly, there was the incident in Washington from 1952. As the nuclear age developed through the ‘50s, the ratio of UFO activity seemed to increase. In June of 1952, there were reports of UFOs over the skies of the east coast of the United States. Starting in Quantico, Virginia, there were various accounts of witnesses from Pan American Airline and National Airline crews spotting crafts through July, seen on radar at the Air Route Traffic Control. At Washington’s National Airport, the sightings near the capital reached such a degree that B-52s and F-94s were dispatched to intercept but to no avail.
These cases would evolve and become more complicated, and many themes were cited and explored on The X-Files. UFO abductions, the alien-human hybrid hypothesis as first cited in “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” UFO cults cited in episodes like “Red Museum,” or Ancient Astronaut Theory first cited in “Biogenesis,” or animal experimentation as cited in “Fearful Symmetry.”
Such real life incidents fed into the story arc’s of The X-Files, and often acted as a starting off point for the writers imagination. What is also to be noted is the point that writers would attend conventions about the UFO phenomenon in the early years, which would lead to the invention of characters like The Lone Gunmen, or other UFO investigators, there’s even accounts of the series writers enjoying cooperation from some government agencies. This cross pollination helped to shape the science and speculation that detailed the series.
Chris Carter and The X-Files took subjects that had been discussed in whispers and brought them into the mainstream, hence the popularity of Ancient Aliens for the History channel, or NASA’s Unexplained Files for the Discovery channel. Indeed, The truth is often stranger than fiction.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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